YJ Fic | Right and Left
Title: Right and Left
Characters: Wally West, Artemis Crock
Pairing: Spitfire
Notes: Posted this on tumblr, but wanted to put it here for easy editing at work tomorrow so I can post it to ff.net. This isn't one of my stronger pieces, but I at least like the beginning and like the second to last paragraph a lot. Set after Failsafe and Disordered. Feedback always welcomed, not expected.
Wally doesn’t even throw his body forward. Not after the bright flashes and not after the startled feeling of falling that has managed to press itself deep into the edges of his mind for the last five nights in a row. The rapid beating of his heart, the sweat collecting at his brow, it’s exactly how he remembers himself before he’s spiraling into nothing. And he’s found in the last few days that if he wills his eyes awake, if he just recognizes the fact that he’s sitting in his bed-the posters of his room further confirmation of reality-he’ll know that the images that were flashing behind his eyelids, the eerie sense of doom that his mind had constructed so perfectly for him was nothing more than that. It was the science of sleep, his mind firing the chemicals that were responsible for his dreams, his nightmares.
He inhales sharply through his nose before pulling himself up into a sitting position on his mattress, the heel of one palm digging into one of his eyes, rubbing at the itch and desire of sleep hanging at its corner. There’s really no way that his body can take another night of this, his eyelids wanting nothing more than to flutter shut and find sleep once more, but his body is just not ready yet to release his mind of the things that were plaguing his waking thoughts.
His senses become a bit more aware of his surroundings-of himself ultimately-because his tongue is running over dry cracked lips even though his mouth is far too dry do anything useful. He throws his hands into his hair, fingers tangling themselves into the curls and familiar feel of his unruly hair, and he just feels better about things, even if it is just for a little while.
The groan, the unsatisfied gurgle of noise that rumbles at the back of his throat nearly frightens him, and he decides then that he has to move. He has to get as far away from here-from his dreams, from his thoughts-as possible. This just wasn’t him.
And he hated how this simulation had done more than just rattle his nerves. It had all but just rattled him down to his very core. He didn’t like it one bit.
He punches his mattress once with his good hand before his lazy eyes begin searching, passing over the stitches of his comforter in search of his cell phone. Every part of him, his fingers that slide over his security lock, everything is with the intention of just calling Dick. Just having his friend kind of mutter something about how he’s ridiculous, about just getting head out of this dark place seems like it would be enough. His finger is hovering over the number, but he’s scrolling back up through his contacts without a second thought. He presses into the screen, her name still flashing in the recesses of his mind, and he decides he likes that far more than the thoughts still festering, the anguish still burning on his tongue.
Expectation dictates to him that she is far consumed by sleep to even acknowledge the buzz of her phone, but reality delivers him a grunt of exertion on her part, a husky tired tone that sounds like it’s been waiting up patiently for him to call.
“H-hello?”
He doesn’t like admitting that he needed to hear that, anything that was a word. It just meant she was okay, and not-
“Hi,” he answers as curt as possible.
He pretends not to hear her curse, and he definitely pretends to not hear her knock something over in the background. And when her voice is breathing heavily into the receiver and into his ear he realizes that she’s plotting some type of retaliation. He probably deserves it at least.
“Wally?” she breathes out slowly, questioningly, “It is 1:30 in the morning.”
“I am aware of this,” he rattles off slowly as he lowers himself back on to his pillow, arm tucked behind his head and phone still cradled to his ear.
“And?”
“And, what?” he repeats, and he can hear her grinding her teeth now.
“I don’t know. Normally, people are asleep at this time, not randomly calling their team mates at odd hours of the night when there is school in the morning.” He decides then that he really likes the low tone of her voice, the weariness that made her rasp more prominent.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” And regardless of the fact that he asked it with the inflection of a question, it’s more of a statement than anything. They both understand that.
He doesn’t hear a response for at least a minute, and he just has to make sure that she’s still there even though he swears he can sense her trying to find words.
“Yeah,” she finally admits, and his jaw locks as he swings his legs over the side of his bed.
That was all he needed to propel himself off the bed. He’s rummaging through a pile of junk that should still have his sneakers buried beneath it, and when she hears the shuffling, the movement she’s quick to speak up again.
“What are you doing?” she questions as he pauses to find the right answer. Because really, what was he doing? He wasn’t so sure, but he knows that he’s caught between moving and standing still and for him the desire to move always reigned supreme.
“Uh, do you mind if I come over?” he asks, his body already overcome by the warmth of his hoodie.
“Wait, what? You can’t just come over!” she hisses into the receiver.
He shifts the phone to his other ear before replying, “You can’t sleep, and I can’t sleep. We might as well just talk. I’m not going to do anything else. I mean, it’s not like Star City is that far and all.” He hears the faintest indication of concentrated breathing on the other end of the phone.
“You okay?”
And she’s quick to recover. “First of all, what do we even need to talk about? Second of all, my mother is a light sleeper, there is no way you are stepping foot inside this apartment undetected. Third of all, don’t you have Robin to talk to? Not sure why you would need to even bother talking to the unwanted archer.”
He bites the inside of his cheek at that, regretting ever making a big deal about that in the first place.
“The exercise…ugh, I mean, I know we talked to Black Canary about, uh, things. But, really it’s not helping with the whole settling thing. And, uh,” he just really wants to lie and say that Robin is out doing some type of hero escapades with the Bats, but there’s something forcing him to tell her the truth because she deserves it, “He’s not exactly the kind of guy that likes talking about his feelings.”
There! It’s all out in the open, the erratic beating of his heart forcing the blood straight to the tips of his ears. And all he can hear is her snorting past a chuckle.
Damn it.
“Sorry, sorry. I just,” she pauses as she finds her breath, “find it funny that you of all people would want to seek me out to divulge your feelings to.”
It does sound as ridiculous as it sounds, and he’s contemplating just shoving his body under his bed and declaring himself a hermit for the rest of his life. He’d make his mother understand (early morning hours tended to make him think irrational thoughts).
“Why? Because it’s so hard to believe that I value your opinion on something?” he seethes, swinging his casted arm up and right into his desk, “Orgghh-“
It’s muffled, caught in his opposite hand that managed to find his mouth before he shouted and woke his mother. The point of contact is throbbing, and it distracts him to the point where he forgets the fact that Artemis is repeating his name in worry. Worry he tells himself as he pulls his hand away, letting his arm throb alone.
“Sorry, God that hurt.”
“What’d you do?” she presses on.
“Nothing, just banged my arm. It’s really nothing,” he squeaks out while trying to steer the conversation back to more important things, “You know what, maybe I shouldn’t have called. Just forget I even-“
“No!” They both go silent, “Look, give me thirty minutes and I’ll be there.”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard me, Wall-Man,” she says, and he really wishes he had chosen a better moniker, “30 minutes or less, I’m already down the fire escape, so you better be ready to talk when I get there. Central City, right?”
“Um, yeah. I’ll meet you by the zeta-“
“In ten minutes,” she cuts in suddenly.
Then there’s the click, a dead line, and he still has the phone pressed to his ear trying to make sense of what had just happened.
--
She’ll never get used to it. It’s always much brighter than she ever anticipates. Her hand falls away from her eyes, and she’s readjusting to the darkness almost forgetting entirely that it is close to 2 in the morning. No sooner does she take a step forward, he’s standing before her, properly dressed and all (she second guesses herself for thinking that sweats were a good idea, but considering it’s colder and still close to 2 in the morning, she’ll forgive herself for this little faux pas).
“Artemis!” he exclaims, and she’s taken aback by his enthusiasm.
“Hey.”
Her arm automatically lifts up, and his happy expression falters a bit, “Um, what’s that?”
“Got you a candy bar,” she says while flicking her wrist, and sending it hurtling in his direction.
He catches it with ease, and she notices the little tug at the corner of his lips and she instantly regrets agreeing to come here in the first place. This was just another reminder of something she couldn’t have, normalcy.
“I brought two with me, though.”
“The both of us know that you will probably scarf those two down in the next fifteen minutes.” The smirk that settles on her lips makes his face fall flat.
“Metabolism, remember?” he says before tearing the foil with his teeth.
“Yeah, yeah garbage disposal.” And she wishes her words could be a bit different, not as harsh. She blames Black Canary primarily. She didn’t have to figure her out. She didn’t have to make her this aware of it, him. “So, why am I here?”
He motions his head forward for her to follow after him.
“Not even really sure about that myself.”
--
He’s warm, even when the cool wind is sweeping through his mused up hair. She had made a comment about it looking like a flickering flame, and he thinks he’ll remember that for as long as he can. Maybe he’ll even remember the way she walked a few paces ahead of him into the empty park when it had already cleared her mouth.
He quickens his steps until he’s walking in time with her, head inclined in her direction as she pays him absolutely no mind. He tugs at her sleeve in the direction of a park bench, nestled between a bush and a tree that’s already lost a majority of its leaves. They settle without a word, and he catches her staring past the empty branches to the sky above laced with stars.
“Why can’t you sleep?”
He blinks a few times, head rising above slumped shoulders, “What?”
She sighs before meeting his gaze finally, and he hates the fact that he’s lost his breath somewhere between seeing her eyes reflecting the moon and how her hair sways with each passing breeze.
“Wally, if you don’t decide what you want to talk about then I’m just going to zeta back home. I can’t believe I let you drag me all the way here for nothing,” she mutters before pushing herself up to her feet.
The single step that she takes forward is halted by his fingers struggling for movement from the confines of his cast. He clutches at her wrist for a moment before his hand weakly drops, fingers catching hers barely.
“Did it hurt?”
He can see how her brow scrunches in confusion when she looks at him over her shoulder, “Excuse me?”
“During the exercise.” She turns on her heel instantly. His eyes never leave her, searching past her mouth that’s seamlessly opening and closing as she searches for something to say as he’s bowing his fingers around hers.
He barely feels her callouses before he wrenches his hand away, realizing exactly what he was doing, and trying desperately to recover. He clears his throat once as she decides to settle back down beside him on the bench.
“That was a stupid question. You probably don’t even remember anythi-“
“I told everyone that it was nothing. That I didn’t feel a thing. But,” she says while bowing her head, taking great interest in the ground, “it felt really cold.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I know. Not all that exciting, right?” He hates the way she smiles about it, mostly because it feels so distant. “But then I started really thinking about the whole thing, and that’s probably why I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”
Silence overtakes her, and the sounds of crickets begin to overwhelm his senses.
“And?” he spits out impatiently, and he kind of regrets his eagerness because she doesn’t respond at all. He begrudgingly grabs hold of her hand, forcing himself not to like it, but finding great comfort in it despite himself, “Come on! You can’t just leave me hanging like that!”
He’s searching her eyes and finding himself pressing his lips together into a fine line, just waiting.
When her hold on him loosens, he realizes that she had been squeezing his hand the entire time. “Look, Wally, it’s nothing really. I just felt really lame for dying first. How useless was I? Just getting zapped. Couldn’t be the second to die?”
“Don’t say that!” he says while letting go of her hand entirely, settling his elbows on his knees while giving her a hard look, “Just don’t, okay? It got awful after you…”
He can’t even say it. He can’t even let himself contemplate the thought further, letting it die effectively on his tongue. Kind of like how he just watched her die. “It was bad when you were gone. Really, bad.” And he thinks if he just keeps repeating those words, she’ll get it. He’s not all too sure that she is though.
He stands up abruptly, unsure of what to do, so fidgeting is best. Raising his good arm, and just smacking his knees as he turns away from her seems like it should be the best damned thing to do at this time. And he does just about everything except growl, and it’s his best option because he might just lose it like he did then.
But it’s not. And he’s just standing there, almost panting, almost overwhelmed and scared. The hero thing was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be all laughs. It was supposed to be about helping people, and feeling good about it. It was about taking down the bad guys and stopping them from doing bad things. And they couldn’t! And they lost people! And it suddenly wasn’t all that fun anymore. It wasn’t fun addressing those people. It wasn’t fun rallying them for their untimely deaths. It wasn’t fun spiraling into oblivion with your best friend. It wasn’t fun having him have to shake the thought of her possibly being alive out of his head because he really believed she was.
“Wally? Hey, are you okay?”
The sound of her voice shakes him from his reverie. “I will be.”
“You never said what was so bad about it though,” she points out.
He inhales deeply, releasing it slowly to clear his thoughts. “It was just really intense. I think the worst part about it was waking up and feeling like it was still happening because everyone was just so…”
“Sad?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t like it that much.”
“Me, either. You know it’s like three right now?”
He looks down to catch the digital numbers making the very edge of his sleeve glow a dull green color. With a sigh, he stands and extends his hand out to her. She looks at it for a second before grabbing it, and offering a small thanks under her breath. “I guess it is. I’ll walk you back.”
--
“Thanks. For. Coming. Or. Something,” he says each word like they were their own sentences, and he sees her smiling.
“You’re. Welcome. Or. Something,” she mimics his articulation, and he offers her a similar look of appreciation.
And it’s almost like they really needed this moment because they’re crashing into each other on purpose, grasping on to each other in hopes of knowing that this was real and that they weren’t really going anywhere. He’s breathing a little harsher, his hand pressing her head into his shoulder. He can feel her, can feel the pressure of her fingers at his back, and the clenching. And he’s just cradling her, his cheek pressed into her hair, drowning in everything that is her. He needed this. He just needed to make sure.
That was probably what made seeing her taken away by the bright lights of the zeta especially hard.
--
They never talk about it afterwards. But they never forget it either.
Characters: Wally West, Artemis Crock
Pairing: Spitfire
Notes: Posted this on tumblr, but wanted to put it here for easy editing at work tomorrow so I can post it to ff.net. This isn't one of my stronger pieces, but I at least like the beginning and like the second to last paragraph a lot. Set after Failsafe and Disordered. Feedback always welcomed, not expected.
Wally doesn’t even throw his body forward. Not after the bright flashes and not after the startled feeling of falling that has managed to press itself deep into the edges of his mind for the last five nights in a row. The rapid beating of his heart, the sweat collecting at his brow, it’s exactly how he remembers himself before he’s spiraling into nothing. And he’s found in the last few days that if he wills his eyes awake, if he just recognizes the fact that he’s sitting in his bed-the posters of his room further confirmation of reality-he’ll know that the images that were flashing behind his eyelids, the eerie sense of doom that his mind had constructed so perfectly for him was nothing more than that. It was the science of sleep, his mind firing the chemicals that were responsible for his dreams, his nightmares.
He inhales sharply through his nose before pulling himself up into a sitting position on his mattress, the heel of one palm digging into one of his eyes, rubbing at the itch and desire of sleep hanging at its corner. There’s really no way that his body can take another night of this, his eyelids wanting nothing more than to flutter shut and find sleep once more, but his body is just not ready yet to release his mind of the things that were plaguing his waking thoughts.
His senses become a bit more aware of his surroundings-of himself ultimately-because his tongue is running over dry cracked lips even though his mouth is far too dry do anything useful. He throws his hands into his hair, fingers tangling themselves into the curls and familiar feel of his unruly hair, and he just feels better about things, even if it is just for a little while.
The groan, the unsatisfied gurgle of noise that rumbles at the back of his throat nearly frightens him, and he decides then that he has to move. He has to get as far away from here-from his dreams, from his thoughts-as possible. This just wasn’t him.
And he hated how this simulation had done more than just rattle his nerves. It had all but just rattled him down to his very core. He didn’t like it one bit.
He punches his mattress once with his good hand before his lazy eyes begin searching, passing over the stitches of his comforter in search of his cell phone. Every part of him, his fingers that slide over his security lock, everything is with the intention of just calling Dick. Just having his friend kind of mutter something about how he’s ridiculous, about just getting head out of this dark place seems like it would be enough. His finger is hovering over the number, but he’s scrolling back up through his contacts without a second thought. He presses into the screen, her name still flashing in the recesses of his mind, and he decides he likes that far more than the thoughts still festering, the anguish still burning on his tongue.
Expectation dictates to him that she is far consumed by sleep to even acknowledge the buzz of her phone, but reality delivers him a grunt of exertion on her part, a husky tired tone that sounds like it’s been waiting up patiently for him to call.
“H-hello?”
He doesn’t like admitting that he needed to hear that, anything that was a word. It just meant she was okay, and not-
“Hi,” he answers as curt as possible.
He pretends not to hear her curse, and he definitely pretends to not hear her knock something over in the background. And when her voice is breathing heavily into the receiver and into his ear he realizes that she’s plotting some type of retaliation. He probably deserves it at least.
“Wally?” she breathes out slowly, questioningly, “It is 1:30 in the morning.”
“I am aware of this,” he rattles off slowly as he lowers himself back on to his pillow, arm tucked behind his head and phone still cradled to his ear.
“And?”
“And, what?” he repeats, and he can hear her grinding her teeth now.
“I don’t know. Normally, people are asleep at this time, not randomly calling their team mates at odd hours of the night when there is school in the morning.” He decides then that he really likes the low tone of her voice, the weariness that made her rasp more prominent.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” And regardless of the fact that he asked it with the inflection of a question, it’s more of a statement than anything. They both understand that.
He doesn’t hear a response for at least a minute, and he just has to make sure that she’s still there even though he swears he can sense her trying to find words.
“Yeah,” she finally admits, and his jaw locks as he swings his legs over the side of his bed.
That was all he needed to propel himself off the bed. He’s rummaging through a pile of junk that should still have his sneakers buried beneath it, and when she hears the shuffling, the movement she’s quick to speak up again.
“What are you doing?” she questions as he pauses to find the right answer. Because really, what was he doing? He wasn’t so sure, but he knows that he’s caught between moving and standing still and for him the desire to move always reigned supreme.
“Uh, do you mind if I come over?” he asks, his body already overcome by the warmth of his hoodie.
“Wait, what? You can’t just come over!” she hisses into the receiver.
He shifts the phone to his other ear before replying, “You can’t sleep, and I can’t sleep. We might as well just talk. I’m not going to do anything else. I mean, it’s not like Star City is that far and all.” He hears the faintest indication of concentrated breathing on the other end of the phone.
“You okay?”
And she’s quick to recover. “First of all, what do we even need to talk about? Second of all, my mother is a light sleeper, there is no way you are stepping foot inside this apartment undetected. Third of all, don’t you have Robin to talk to? Not sure why you would need to even bother talking to the unwanted archer.”
He bites the inside of his cheek at that, regretting ever making a big deal about that in the first place.
“The exercise…ugh, I mean, I know we talked to Black Canary about, uh, things. But, really it’s not helping with the whole settling thing. And, uh,” he just really wants to lie and say that Robin is out doing some type of hero escapades with the Bats, but there’s something forcing him to tell her the truth because she deserves it, “He’s not exactly the kind of guy that likes talking about his feelings.”
There! It’s all out in the open, the erratic beating of his heart forcing the blood straight to the tips of his ears. And all he can hear is her snorting past a chuckle.
Damn it.
“Sorry, sorry. I just,” she pauses as she finds her breath, “find it funny that you of all people would want to seek me out to divulge your feelings to.”
It does sound as ridiculous as it sounds, and he’s contemplating just shoving his body under his bed and declaring himself a hermit for the rest of his life. He’d make his mother understand (early morning hours tended to make him think irrational thoughts).
“Why? Because it’s so hard to believe that I value your opinion on something?” he seethes, swinging his casted arm up and right into his desk, “Orgghh-“
It’s muffled, caught in his opposite hand that managed to find his mouth before he shouted and woke his mother. The point of contact is throbbing, and it distracts him to the point where he forgets the fact that Artemis is repeating his name in worry. Worry he tells himself as he pulls his hand away, letting his arm throb alone.
“Sorry, God that hurt.”
“What’d you do?” she presses on.
“Nothing, just banged my arm. It’s really nothing,” he squeaks out while trying to steer the conversation back to more important things, “You know what, maybe I shouldn’t have called. Just forget I even-“
“No!” They both go silent, “Look, give me thirty minutes and I’ll be there.”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard me, Wall-Man,” she says, and he really wishes he had chosen a better moniker, “30 minutes or less, I’m already down the fire escape, so you better be ready to talk when I get there. Central City, right?”
“Um, yeah. I’ll meet you by the zeta-“
“In ten minutes,” she cuts in suddenly.
Then there’s the click, a dead line, and he still has the phone pressed to his ear trying to make sense of what had just happened.
--
She’ll never get used to it. It’s always much brighter than she ever anticipates. Her hand falls away from her eyes, and she’s readjusting to the darkness almost forgetting entirely that it is close to 2 in the morning. No sooner does she take a step forward, he’s standing before her, properly dressed and all (she second guesses herself for thinking that sweats were a good idea, but considering it’s colder and still close to 2 in the morning, she’ll forgive herself for this little faux pas).
“Artemis!” he exclaims, and she’s taken aback by his enthusiasm.
“Hey.”
Her arm automatically lifts up, and his happy expression falters a bit, “Um, what’s that?”
“Got you a candy bar,” she says while flicking her wrist, and sending it hurtling in his direction.
He catches it with ease, and she notices the little tug at the corner of his lips and she instantly regrets agreeing to come here in the first place. This was just another reminder of something she couldn’t have, normalcy.
“I brought two with me, though.”
“The both of us know that you will probably scarf those two down in the next fifteen minutes.” The smirk that settles on her lips makes his face fall flat.
“Metabolism, remember?” he says before tearing the foil with his teeth.
“Yeah, yeah garbage disposal.” And she wishes her words could be a bit different, not as harsh. She blames Black Canary primarily. She didn’t have to figure her out. She didn’t have to make her this aware of it, him. “So, why am I here?”
He motions his head forward for her to follow after him.
“Not even really sure about that myself.”
--
He’s warm, even when the cool wind is sweeping through his mused up hair. She had made a comment about it looking like a flickering flame, and he thinks he’ll remember that for as long as he can. Maybe he’ll even remember the way she walked a few paces ahead of him into the empty park when it had already cleared her mouth.
He quickens his steps until he’s walking in time with her, head inclined in her direction as she pays him absolutely no mind. He tugs at her sleeve in the direction of a park bench, nestled between a bush and a tree that’s already lost a majority of its leaves. They settle without a word, and he catches her staring past the empty branches to the sky above laced with stars.
“Why can’t you sleep?”
He blinks a few times, head rising above slumped shoulders, “What?”
She sighs before meeting his gaze finally, and he hates the fact that he’s lost his breath somewhere between seeing her eyes reflecting the moon and how her hair sways with each passing breeze.
“Wally, if you don’t decide what you want to talk about then I’m just going to zeta back home. I can’t believe I let you drag me all the way here for nothing,” she mutters before pushing herself up to her feet.
The single step that she takes forward is halted by his fingers struggling for movement from the confines of his cast. He clutches at her wrist for a moment before his hand weakly drops, fingers catching hers barely.
“Did it hurt?”
He can see how her brow scrunches in confusion when she looks at him over her shoulder, “Excuse me?”
“During the exercise.” She turns on her heel instantly. His eyes never leave her, searching past her mouth that’s seamlessly opening and closing as she searches for something to say as he’s bowing his fingers around hers.
He barely feels her callouses before he wrenches his hand away, realizing exactly what he was doing, and trying desperately to recover. He clears his throat once as she decides to settle back down beside him on the bench.
“That was a stupid question. You probably don’t even remember anythi-“
“I told everyone that it was nothing. That I didn’t feel a thing. But,” she says while bowing her head, taking great interest in the ground, “it felt really cold.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I know. Not all that exciting, right?” He hates the way she smiles about it, mostly because it feels so distant. “But then I started really thinking about the whole thing, and that’s probably why I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”
Silence overtakes her, and the sounds of crickets begin to overwhelm his senses.
“And?” he spits out impatiently, and he kind of regrets his eagerness because she doesn’t respond at all. He begrudgingly grabs hold of her hand, forcing himself not to like it, but finding great comfort in it despite himself, “Come on! You can’t just leave me hanging like that!”
He’s searching her eyes and finding himself pressing his lips together into a fine line, just waiting.
When her hold on him loosens, he realizes that she had been squeezing his hand the entire time. “Look, Wally, it’s nothing really. I just felt really lame for dying first. How useless was I? Just getting zapped. Couldn’t be the second to die?”
“Don’t say that!” he says while letting go of her hand entirely, settling his elbows on his knees while giving her a hard look, “Just don’t, okay? It got awful after you…”
He can’t even say it. He can’t even let himself contemplate the thought further, letting it die effectively on his tongue. Kind of like how he just watched her die. “It was bad when you were gone. Really, bad.” And he thinks if he just keeps repeating those words, she’ll get it. He’s not all too sure that she is though.
He stands up abruptly, unsure of what to do, so fidgeting is best. Raising his good arm, and just smacking his knees as he turns away from her seems like it should be the best damned thing to do at this time. And he does just about everything except growl, and it’s his best option because he might just lose it like he did then.
But it’s not. And he’s just standing there, almost panting, almost overwhelmed and scared. The hero thing was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be all laughs. It was supposed to be about helping people, and feeling good about it. It was about taking down the bad guys and stopping them from doing bad things. And they couldn’t! And they lost people! And it suddenly wasn’t all that fun anymore. It wasn’t fun addressing those people. It wasn’t fun rallying them for their untimely deaths. It wasn’t fun spiraling into oblivion with your best friend. It wasn’t fun having him have to shake the thought of her possibly being alive out of his head because he really believed she was.
“Wally? Hey, are you okay?”
The sound of her voice shakes him from his reverie. “I will be.”
“You never said what was so bad about it though,” she points out.
He inhales deeply, releasing it slowly to clear his thoughts. “It was just really intense. I think the worst part about it was waking up and feeling like it was still happening because everyone was just so…”
“Sad?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t like it that much.”
“Me, either. You know it’s like three right now?”
He looks down to catch the digital numbers making the very edge of his sleeve glow a dull green color. With a sigh, he stands and extends his hand out to her. She looks at it for a second before grabbing it, and offering a small thanks under her breath. “I guess it is. I’ll walk you back.”
--
“Thanks. For. Coming. Or. Something,” he says each word like they were their own sentences, and he sees her smiling.
“You’re. Welcome. Or. Something,” she mimics his articulation, and he offers her a similar look of appreciation.
And it’s almost like they really needed this moment because they’re crashing into each other on purpose, grasping on to each other in hopes of knowing that this was real and that they weren’t really going anywhere. He’s breathing a little harsher, his hand pressing her head into his shoulder. He can feel her, can feel the pressure of her fingers at his back, and the clenching. And he’s just cradling her, his cheek pressed into her hair, drowning in everything that is her. He needed this. He just needed to make sure.
That was probably what made seeing her taken away by the bright lights of the zeta especially hard.
--
They never talk about it afterwards. But they never forget it either.